L'ombra di Stalin

I knew nothing about Gareth Jones or Duranty before this and thought it an excellent film. James Norton is as good as ever and the rest of the cast are excellent.

Superb filming of a terrible time in the development of communist USSR and the conditions that the peasant class had to endure. A must see if you're interested in history but don't expect any laughs or edge of the seat thrills.

I'm very glad I stuck this one out.

It is a little slow at the beginning, but the moral clarity of this film really stands out. This is a true story that needs to be heard. It's a story of an undercover freelance journalist who was a great hero, though many people don't know his name. It's a story of how the New York Times and the other intellectual elites in the 1930s defended one of the most evil regimes in history. It's a story of the naivety of so many well-meaning people. It's a story of the unspeakable evil of communism. These are stories you won't usually hear from Hollywood, but someone had the balls to make this.

The only negatives of this film are some obvious lacking in production value at times. But this is made up by surprisingly terrific acting and some extraordinarily effective scenes portraying the great evils of communism.

This is a powerful film which I'm afraid few people will watch. Even those who watch it, may feel the situations it portrays are exaggerated or completely made up. They are not. The problems caused by Stalin in Ukraine are, if anything, downplayed.

But beyond the historical accuracy are the questions about the behavior of the people and their morality as it is portrayed in the film. Did diplomats and politicians really behave like this? Not only did they behave like this. They continue to behave like this. I've worked in government NGOs overseas and I've seen the insincerity of most diplomats close up. I've also experienced their ability to blind themselves of the truth if the truth endangers their high paid positions.

There are people out there now who know the truth and who are being told to keep quiet. There are people I've known who were undermined when trying to do what was right. So, this movie is telling the truth for them. You may not like what it has to say, but who says the truth has to be pleasant.

All the terror, horror and atrocities of the war and its effects on Ukraine, the Holodomor (Famine of Terror or the Great Famine), including empty villages, starving people, cannibalism and the forced harvest of grain, a beautiful but belated homage to the Lord Gareth Jones (journalist), very sad, appropriate for the current war Russia x Ukraine, a real story, Portraits of War, told simply and efficiently, as he wanted and reports at the beginning of the film...

Sometimes cinema can bring history alive and little known facts and personalities can be highlighted or rediscovered, and so it is here. Gareth Jones was a diplomat and journalist who wrote about the terrible famine in the Ukraine during the early 1930s which the Soviet's, and many others, we're trying to hide at the time. It's a sober but fascinating insight into a almost forgotten episode, and is very skilfully done with a fine central performance by Edward Norton as Jones and well staged scenes of his tense visits to the USSR and his gradual discovery of the regimes corruption and lies. Tightly scripted and directed, this is one worth discovering.